Welcome To Loot Pinata Island

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 12:25 PM

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Welcome back from the weekend of running around the isle of loot (AKA Timeless Isle).   If you were able to log on this weekend and run around you weren't alone.  There were players all over looking for elite  mobs,  chests and reputation groups.

The first week of a new area tends to be the most congested.  Everyone wants to check out the new digs and get first hand grabs on the good stuff.  The enjoyable part is not just getting all the goodies into your bags but after a little bit of work you can have some nice gear for any alts you have.

Also if you have been keeping up you've been burning off your cooldowns every day stocking up for the high end profitable gear.   Malovelent PVP gear recipes are popping out each day with prices wildly varying.  I was able to sell a couple of pieces for 1500g, but it seemed that the pricing dropped quickly as more and more players were able to place gear on the AH.

I also got my first taste of raiding since early in the year.  The Seige of Orgrimmar bosses are tuned heavily to movement and coordination.  Flex raid has a very nice comfortable feel to it.   Not to hard but not too easy.  Players who give it a try (and they are serious with the gear levels needed) will enjoy the encounters.

One of my favorite parts on the weekend was the rushing from Elite to Elite to get my share of the loot.  Most of the Elites hit decently hard, but many players are sitting back and waiting for the last 15% to get a hit on the mob and cash in.  Where some might feel this defeats the spirit of the battle,  it still is a viable way to loot gear and items without the large repair bill.

The gang at Icy-Veins has a nice rundown of everything having to do with the Timeless Isle as well as other things having to do with Patch 5.4.   It's a good read on things you might have missed.

Also, I'm suggesting that players go grab an add-on called Handynotes from Curse.   If you have been reading this is the same add-on I used to finish up the storyline to get exalted with Lorewalkers.  They have added some modules linking the different Elites on the isle as well as treasure chests.  It saves a lot of  questions in trade chat of 'where is x elite at'.    For those that are brave I dare you go to into trade chat and convince your compatriots that there is an elite called 'Waldo'.  Who wouldn't want to hear 'where's waldo' in trade chat?

Overall I like patch 5.4, and it's possibilities with the storyline.   And yes,  I know who the Warchief is but I'm not telling.

Good Luck and Good Hunting



Want to get in contact with me? . Email me at Dragonbear @ gmail. dOT com or find me on twitter at "@JMTCMommar" You can find me hanging out on the Shandris Server, chat me up, and I will buy you a glass of juice. 

Last Minute Buys and Sells
Patch 5.4: Mental Preparation
You Found What????
Hearthstone:   The Beginning
Patch 5.4: Budgeting for the Patch
Get thee To a TradeSkillMaster 2.0
Patch 5.4 Prep:  No Sleep til Brooklyn
Customer First
You're Squishing My Items
The Ways of The Force Are Strange
It's a Date.. Maybe?
Kill The Death Knight.. Kill It Now
Time to Remodel The Financial House
Sense Of Entitlement
Patch 5.4:   Golden Lotus Beatdown
Four Levels of Wow Activity
Patch 5.4:  Preparing your Farmers
Patch 5.4:  Easy Gear.. Easy Go
Prepping for Patch 5.4: The Beginning
The End of a Pricing Era
Patch 5.4 prep:   Do You Know Where Your Tailor Is?

Patch 5.4: The Good and the Bad

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 12:28 PM

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Patch 5.4 is here and staying in our living room for a bit.   As with any patch there are good things and bad ideas.

• The lore feels a little lacking in some cases.  It may have just been the large amount of dead bodies      laying everywhere that made it feel like a blitz fest.

• One decently geared toon can pretty much gear all of your alts after a time.  Drops are plentiful for the different gear classes.  This means that a lot of the older areas will feel abandoned once players have the rest of their toons to level 90.  

• So many players running around that it's difficult to get 'kills' needed for quests.  The new faction tagging system comes in handy for elites but for normal mobs your going to be stepping on toes 

• The new items that allow the new transmute mechanic for professions drop relatively quickly.  None of this grinding for hours waiting for your tome to drop 

Sales have been doing pretty well on Gems and enchants.  Since the low level transmutes (Living Steel,  Lightning Steel Ingot) do not share cooldowns with the higher end transmutes there is going to be a good side business of keeping these up and running.  The material cost for both are similar but doubling your transmute materials will allow you to craft not just the high end items but also the lower middle of the road epics.

Skinners are extremely happy with the new island for all of the mobs that players are killing and leaving around unprocessed.  This weekend should bring a lot of chances to stock up on Exotic leathers.  This may drive down the market on the Auction House so the best idea is to combine your expertise with another profession (if you don't have one already) to process the extra materials.

I was disappointed that the changes in reputation vendors didn't expand to the Shadow Pan Assault.  But I can understand the logic because there is already 496 gear that drops from the new area.  This may change later, but it still keeps the raid rewards from reputation with the Shadow Pan assault instead of just driving players to go directly to the new Orgrimmar raid.

This weekend will tell a lot of whats going to happen with the patch.  There has already been a world first to defeat Hellscream (if you want to see the new Warchief just youtube the video).  This bode's well for players wanting to see the new content but might effect the long term usefulness of the final raid.  Players at the end of an expansion cycle get bored easily by repetition. 

Either way the excitement was worth the wait.

Good Luck and Good Hunting

Want to get in contact with me? . Email me at Dragonbear @ gmail. dOT com or find me on twitter at "@JMTCMommar" You can find me hanging out on the Shandris Server, chat me up, and I will buy you a glass of juice. 

Last Minute Buys and Sells
Patch 5.4: Mental Preparation
You Found What????
Hearthstone:   The Beginning
Patch 5.4: Budgeting for the Patch
Get thee To a TradeSkillMaster 2.0
Patch 5.4 Prep:  No Sleep til Brooklyn
Customer First
You're Squishing My Items
The Ways of The Force Are Strange
It's a Date.. Maybe?
Kill The Death Knight.. Kill It Now
Time to Remodel The Financial House
Sense Of Entitlement
Patch 5.4:   Golden Lotus Beatdown
Four Levels of Wow Activity
Patch 5.4:  Preparing your Farmers
Patch 5.4:  Easy Gear.. Easy Go
Prepping for Patch 5.4: The Beginning
The End of a Pricing Era
Patch 5.4 prep:   Do You Know Where Your Tailor Is?

Last Minute Buys and Sells

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 12:47 PM

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Yep gang it's here.   Today is patch day.  In a few hours we will all be logging in,  running around checking out the new toys and enjoying the freshness of a new patch.

Before the servers dropped off to load up the patch I did a quick grab for all of the cheap materials that were on the server.   Surprisingly there wasn't a lot there which usually means they are higher priced.  But the average cost were reasonable especially with the possibility of charging for higher prices less than 12 hours later.

The biggest goal I have for today is to make sure that I have all of my crafting professions starting to generate the new patterns available.  That means they all get to run over to the Pandaria until the magic tome or pattern drops.   I expect many a grumbling about bad rolls in the upcoming couple of days.  

Also before I went to bed for the night with dreams of smacking down Hellscream and his minions I dropped presents in the mail for my farming mercenaries crew.  I decided that they probably needed the friendly motivation to be reminded who takes care of them in both the cutthroat opening days of a patch and the dog days as interest in crafting wanes.   

The last thing I did is plant all of my toons that would be farming for patterns at my favorite spots depending on their classes.  My warrior will be running around the new Timeless Isle getting geared up for a return to raiding.   I had been lax in my gear runs concentrated on leveling toons and making gold.  So it will take me a concentrated week to get up to raid gear worthy status.  

Ans as always,  my last but not least goal is to have some fun in the next couple of weeks.  I belittle this to death I'm sure but it's just as important to me as how much gold I made yesterday.  The longer a game goes the more that boredom can kick in.  So finding the enjoyment out of simple things can bring me back to the keyboard over and over again.

See you on the other side

Good Luck and Good Hunting

Want to get in contact with me? . Email me at Dragonbear @ gmail. dOT com or find me on twitter at "@JMTCMommar" You can find me hanging out on the Shandris Server, chat me up, and I will buy you a glass of juice. 

Patch 5.4: Mental Preparation
You Found What????
Hearthstone:   The Beginning
Patch 5.4: Budgeting for the Patch
Get thee To a TradeSkillMaster 2.0
Patch 5.4 Prep:  No Sleep til Brooklyn
Customer First
You're Squishing My Items
The Ways of The Force Are Strange
It's a Date.. Maybe?
Kill The Death Knight.. Kill It Now
Time to Remodel The Financial House
Sense Of Entitlement
Patch 5.4:   Golden Lotus Beatdown
Four Levels of Wow Activity
Patch 5.4:  Preparing your Farmers
Patch 5.4:  Easy Gear.. Easy Go
Prepping for Patch 5.4: The Beginning
The End of a Pricing Era
Patch 5.4 prep:   Do You Know Where Your Tailor Is?

It's Here... It's Finally HERE!!!!

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 12:24 PM

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It is finally here.  The last major patch for the Mists of Pandaria expansion.  Now I did say major because there will be the patch that leads into the next expansion.  But for all intensive purposes this is the last chapter in the story that brought us pandas,  Shas and a really really annoying boss yelling at the Horde all the time.

Today is the last day to be able to get all of your stuff together for those quick flip investments.  I decided to take a little bit of a backseat and not be so anxious to dive into the investment whirlpool from the start.   That doesn't mean I am bare for items to drop on the AH for a large profit, but I'm more interested in seeing the new content during the first week or so.

With the new area opening,  new raid mobs to smack around and the end to an epic storyline there will be plenty to do in those opening days.  New players will be returning to see what the hubbub is, and old players will be weighing their options for the future.

Just like every patch there will be things that go quite well, and other things that fail from the start.  That is the nature of a living,  breathing, changing the game that warcraft is.  A static boring game that never changes ends up dying on the tree.

The important thing tomorrow will be to have fun.  I have said it many times and my full intentions is to enjoy this next patch.  Whether I"m having fun crafting and selling items or raiding for the last time in MOP, having fun becomes the reason I log into the game this week.

That and to fleece all the sheep (whoops,  the goblin escaped there).

Good Luck and Good Hunting


Want to get in contact with me? . Email me at Dragonbear @ gmail. dOT com or find me on twitter at "@JMTCMommar" You can find me hanging out on the Shandris Server, chat me up, and I will buy you a glass of juice. 

Patch 5.4: Mental Preparation
You Found What????
Hearthstone:   The Beginning
Patch 5.4: Budgeting for the Patch
Get thee To a TradeSkillMaster 2.0
Patch 5.4 Prep:  No Sleep til Brooklyn
Customer First
You're Squishing My Items
The Ways of The Force Are Strange
It's a Date.. Maybe?
Kill The Death Knight.. Kill It Now
Time to Remodel The Financial House
Sense Of Entitlement
Patch 5.4:   Golden Lotus Beatdown
Four Levels of Wow Activity
Patch 5.4:  Preparing your Farmers
Patch 5.4:  Easy Gear.. Easy Go
Prepping for Patch 5.4: The Beginning
The End of a Pricing Era
Patch 5.4 prep:   Do You Know Where Your Tailor Is?

Patch 5.4: Mental Preparation

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 12:27 PM

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Unless there is a major catastrophe between today and next Tuesday,  patch 5.4 will be in full force.  There have been a lot of comments,  suggestions,  demands about what to save,  how to save it and even what to prepare toon wise.

But there is a different view when it comes to mental preparation for a patch.  It is not just a matter of having your Mountain Dew and Popcorn bowl ready to go for a marathon those first couple of days.  The mental preparation is also about what to expect and how to bounce back.

Players will be running instances at a much larger rate trying to stack their Justice Points and Valor points for the new gear.  That means that there will be players expecting to be carried through instances.  Also there will be players that are impatient because they are just there to blitz to the last boss and move onto the next instance.

Sales other than raw order will dry up for the most part because players will be waiting for the access to the uber gear that is available from the different reputation vendors.  

But my personal favorite will be the chatter in trade chat about how this patch is the worst patch ever. How nothing works,  everything is broken and epic items are not dropping each time players walk over the new island area.  This can become very frustrating for players to have to listen too as they are churning through areas and looking for items.  Very very frustrating to the point that you feel the need to call your therapist for a Warcraft intervention.

Just keep your head above water in the next week and grind out what your goals are.  Don't sweat the small stuff and keep at what is important to you.  Gathering for your professions,  gathering to resell and then being prepared for the carnage that will be patch 5.4.

And if an epic drops for you that first day next week?   Do a little dance and know that you were one of the lucky ones.

Good Luck and Good Hunting

Want to get in contact with me? . Email me at Dragonbear @ gmail. dOT com or find me on twitter at "@JMTCMommar" You can find me hanging out on the Shandris Server, chat me up, and I will buy you a glass of juice. 

You Found What????
Hearthstone:   The Beginning
Patch 5.4: Budgeting for the Patch
Get thee To a TradeSkillMaster 2.0
Patch 5.4 Prep:  No Sleep til Brooklyn
Customer First
You're Squishing My Items
The Ways of The Force Are Strange
It's a Date.. Maybe?
Kill The Death Knight.. Kill It Now
Time to Remodel The Financial House
Sense Of Entitlement
Patch 5.4:   Golden Lotus Beatdown
Four Levels of Wow Activity
Patch 5.4:  Preparing your Farmers
Patch 5.4:  Easy Gear.. Easy Go
Prepping for Patch 5.4: The Beginning
The End of a Pricing Era
Patch 5.4 prep:   Do You Know Where Your Tailor Is?

You found what????

Posted by J.E. Douglas at 10:03 AM

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As I was going through my storage areas; crafting,  looting and pillaging the auction house, I ran into an issue.  First lets go back into the way back machine where I told you that I had caught up on all of the items I had saved from the Lich King and Cataclysm expansions and processed them all.

With sales starting to slow down on different fronts due to the loot pinata that will be the new patch,  I have been exercising more the brain cells looking for new places to ply my trade.  As I was saying I ended up going through some guild banks and came face to face with two guild tabs full of cloth.

Yes gang,  I accidentally told a fib to you about having finished all of the processing of materials.   Not sure whether I found another goldmine or needed to cuddle with my stuffed gold goblin I looked at what I had.  Most of the stacks were Netherweave (both in bolt and in raw form) as well as a smattering of Frostweave etc.  Most of these could be processed easily into bags which still sell pretty well. 

I had forgotten one of my cardinal rules when it comes to long term storage.  Know where your stuff is.   I have add-ons that tell me the contents of all of the different guild banks but for some reason I missed all of this stuff.

The 16 slot bags sell between 15-30 a piece.  This might seem like a paltry sum of gold for most players but as we get closer to patch day and the sales dwindle even more that extra 500g a day can add up quickly.  Other professions still have opportunities to chunk money into the coffers.  Flipping between the arbitrage of raw ore and bars can net a good chuck of profit as well.  Same thing with players processing exotic leathers into Magnificent hides.

As we get closer to the day that it all changes your mind will be your best tool to use.  A simple profit can add up to an immense fortune as you continue towards total domination.

Now can I borrow some needle and thread?  I have some bags to make today

Good Luck and Good Hunting

Want to get in contact with me? . Email me at Dragonbear @ gmail. dOT com or find me on twitter at "@JMTCMommar" You can find me hanging out on the Shandris Server, chat me up, and I will buy you a glass of juice. 


Hearthstone:   The Beginning
Patch 5.4: Budgeting for the Patch
Get thee To a TradeSkillMaster 2.0
Patch 5.4 Prep:  No Sleep til Brooklyn
Customer First
You're Squishing My Items
The Ways of The Force Are Strange
It's a Date.. Maybe?
Kill The Death Knight.. Kill It Now
Time to Remodel The Financial House
Sense Of Entitlement
Patch 5.4:   Golden Lotus Beatdown
Four Levels of Wow Activity
Patch 5.4:  Preparing your Farmers
Patch 5.4:  Easy Gear.. Easy Go
Prepping for Patch 5.4: The Beginning
The End of a Pricing Era
Patch 5.4 prep:   Do You Know Where Your Tailor Is?